Current aircraft designs utilize a variety of airfoils on wings, horizontal stabilizers, canards, rotor blades, vertical stabilizers, and a variety of other structures consisting primarily of relatively fixed airfoil surfaces. Flying surfaces generally must be optimized for specific applications such as low-speed handling or improved high-speed aerodynamics. Aircraft configured to operate in several performance environments must often adopt airfoil surfaces that provide suitable characteristics in multiple environments. Such a compromise, however, typically diminishes the overall performance of the aircraft, as well as diminishing performance in specific flight conditions.
Conventional configurations often limit modification of the flying surfaces to that which may be achieved by way of mechanical moving surfaces. Mechanical actuators and linkage systems are utilized to effectuate changes in the airfoil surfaces to allow for enhanced low-speed flight and limited autopilot maneuvering. Military aircraft have utilized mechanically swept wings for improved aerodynamics during high speed flight. Although movable airfoil components may have a substantial effect on the aerodynamic flight characteristics of the airfoil, the shapes of the airfoil components generally are fixed. As such, further optimizing airfoils for performance over a larger range of the flight envelope typically requires incorporating additional airfoil components as well as all those certain components necessary to move the additional airfoil components. Including additional moveable airfoil components tends to be unappealing, however, due limited space and weight requirements associated with most aircraft.
Shape adaptive airfoils are an improved approach whereby the configuration of the airfoil may be optimized throughout the flight envelope of the aircraft. Modifying the shape of the airfoil enables the configuration of the airfoil to be optimized over most of the flight conditions of the aircraft. An optimized airfoil may provide better lift characteristics at lower speeds to allow greater take-off weight while providing lower drag at high speed to achieve a greater flight range. Thus, a modifiable airfoil capable of being optimized throughout the flight envelope is believed to provide improvements to aircraft performance.
While the present disclosure is subject to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. The invention should be understood to not be limited to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present disclosure.